Where database blog posts get flame-broiled to perfection
Well, look what the automated feed dragged into my inbox. Another version number ticked over. 9.1.8. The sheer, earth-shattering leap from 9.1.7 must have the whole world holding its breath. I've seen punch cards with more significant updates. Before you all rush to type yum update like it's the dawn of a new age, let's pour some cold, stale coffee on this "release."
First off, this relentless version churn is what you kids call "agile," right? Back in my day, we called it “not getting it right the first time.” We’d ship a version of DB2 and it would run, untouched, for years. It was so stable you could etch the version number into the side of the mainframe. You’re on version 9.1.8 and I guarantee you're already planning 9.1.9 to fix whatever "enterprise-ready" feature you broke in this one. We wrote our change logs in COBOL, and if you needed more than one page, you were sent back to design.
I'll bet the "full list of changes" is a marvel of modern marketing. You’re probably bragging about some new "observability" or "resiliency" feature. Let me tell you about resiliency. It’s 3 a.m. in a server room colder than my ex-wife's heart, swapping out 9-track tape reels for the nightly backup. It's spending twelve hours restoring a corrupted VSAM file from tape and getting it right, because the alternative was updating your resume. Your "resiliency" is a checkbox in a YAML file that probably just reroutes traffic to a data center that’s only slightly on fire.
You talk about fixing issues. The very fact that you have to announce this implies the previous version was a house of cards in a hurricane. You know what we had in 1985? Hierarchical databases. You put data in, it stayed there. You wanted it back? You got the same data. It wasn't magic, it was just competent engineering. You kids and your "eventual consistency" is just a fancy way of saying “we'll find your data eventually, maybe. No promises.” You’re probably fixing a bug where your “schemaless” design decided a customer's zip code was a floating-point number.
We recommend you upgrade to this latest version.
Of course you do. This whole ecosystem feels like it's held together with spit and hope. You have to keep moving so the whole thing doesn't collapse. We built systems that outlasted the companies that bought them. You build systems that need patching before the press release is even cached on the CDN. This whole "Elastic Stack" sounds like something you buy to keep your pants up, and it seems about as reliable.
And I'm supposed to read the "release notes" to understand the changes? Son, I used to get my documentation in three-ring binders so heavy you could use them as a boat anchor. Those manuals were declarative. They were final. Your release notes are an ephemeral webpage that will 404 in six months, just like the startup that built the flashy feature you're so proud of. This is the digital equivalent of writing your business plan on a cocktail napkin.
Congratulations on the new number. Let me know when you get to version 10. By then, maybe you'll have reinvented the B-tree index and called it something revolutionary like "synergistic data-kinetic mapping."
I won't be holding my breath. Or reading this blog again.